


Interlude 4 -- Grounded

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-02
Updated: 2007-01-02
Packaged: 2019-05-15 11:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14789675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Donna's thoughts at CJ and Danny's wedding





	Interlude 4 -- Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

Grounded

G-rated

Donna/Josh, CJ/Danny, Jed/Abbey, Sam, others

So here I am, writing about CJ and Danny’s wedding and suddenly several of the guests are speaking to me and my muse, demanding to be heard. Donna spoke the loudest and first, so for a while her story was in "Time out of Joint". However, the time line is now right for her .

"Road to a Better World" is the name I've given to CJ's project with Franklin Hollis.

Not mine, never were, never will be, but they consume my soul.

Feedback, constructive criticism always welcomed.

\----------------------------------------------------------,

Memorial Day Weekend, 2007

Sunday Morning

“Dum dum da-dum”. Danny’s college buddies hummed the Wedding March from Lohengrin. “Okay,” Josh said, “one more to go. It looks like President and Mrs. Bartlet will be the last couple out of bed this morning.”

Donna looked up to see CJ and Danny approaching the lanai where breakfast was being served. Her arm was at his waist, his was around her shoulders. Their joy was so palpable, you could feel it in the air around them. She felt a slight shudder and without realizing it, made the sign against the evil eye that her Italian grandmother had taught her so many years ago. “Where did that come from?” she wondered, but still prayed that they would always be as happy as they were today.

It confounded her. Although they had waited eight years for each other, neither CJ nor Danny were 18-year old innocents on their wedding night. They each had past relationships and they had been living together since the inauguration. So why did CJ emit this aura of someone experiencing life for the first time? Why did Danny appear to be all at the same time proud, adoring, in awe of, and yet totally in charge of his wife? Was it because they were aware of their attraction and the restrictions on that attraction during those years and maybe doubted they would ever reach this point, while she and Josh didn't realize what they had until 7 months ago? A month ago, she and CJ were lunching in DC, talking about her plans, when CJ suddenly got weepy. She told Donna how close she came to not choosing to share her life with Danny and how incredibly blessed she felt.

There were more hoots and a "da-dumming" of Hail to the Chief as the Bartlets joined the group, walking hand in hand, their fingers intertwined as they had done for at least the past eight years and probably for all the more than 40 years of their married life. When told of their distinction as laziest/sleepiest/horniest couple, the former President made some comment about practice making perfect and Abbey actually blushed.

Their relationship was different than CJ and Danny’s. Though obviously still in love with one another through all these many years, they seemed more, equal – no, that wasn’t the right word, what was it?– than the new Concannons. Last night when CJ was talking about the house they would be buying in Santa Monica, how it wasn’t exactly what she wanted but that the “bones” were there and that there was space to turn it from the small “C” shaped cottage to the “squared off A” shaped house with the enclosed courtyard that she wanted, Danny made a comment about her having the vision to see the potential in things. When she and Frank Hollis talked about "Road to a Better World" -- their project to bring the equivalent of the old US highway system to Africa ("we don't need 4 plus lanes, overpasses, interchanges, just two lane paved roads that won't wash out in a monsoon"), she could tell that CJ would always be a leader. Although CJ claimed that she was through with politics, that she no longer wanted “the fate of the world as we know it” on her shoulders (although Donna thought that CJ, along with Nancy McNally, would be the best choices for first female POTUS), she would always be doing something that mattered, and Danny would always be there for her, and not as a faithful servant, but as her husband, supportive, secure in his masculinity and her need for him.

Grounded; that was the word for which she was looking. Danny was the ground wire, the rock that held their relationship, and her, to reality. The Bartlets, and for that matter, Matt and Helen Santos, were each equally grounded; they played off each other, gave purpose and constraint to one another.

She looked over at Josh, her Josh, the man who now had “the fate of the world as we know it” on his shoulders. For seven years, she had been his ground. She kept his work life and, more often than not, his personal life in check. Now they were moving on a different path. She was still keeping his personal life grounded, but now she was part of that personal life. Also, she was moving into a more secure place in her own life, a more secure sense of self. In a sense, she was becoming a feminine Danny. Sam and Margaret had taken over the professional grounding for her and the three of them would help Josh Lyman to balance his personal life with his heavy responsibilities, to succeed in the one area that Leo McGarry, God be good to him, had failed.

Everyone had teased her and Josh about what the Santos’ would say about their singing “Afternoon Delight” at the karaoke challenge. However, the presidential couple was very much aware of their relationship and very committed to helping them make it work. There were two connecting rooms set aside for them in the residence. One served as a living room, dining room, kitchenette with a microwave, a counter-top oven, a refrigerator. Josh wanted to put the kitchen stuff in the second bathroom, but Donna insisted that although they might shower together regularly, she needed her own sink and vanity that she could keep neat and orderly. If they couldn’t make it home at a reasonable hour, or if all heck was breaking out in the nation, the world, or just Washington, DC, or if they just needed an hour to themselves, they had a place to be ‘JoshandDonna’ a few yards away. For now, it was very hush-hush, but that would soon change.

Later this afternoon, after CJ and Danny left for Scotland, but with the rest of the west wing gang still here, Josh would announce their engagement and upcoming wedding; she would take out the solitaire that was currently pinned to her bra and wear it for all to see. They both agreed that they did not want to distract from the wedding couple, but they did want to share their joy with their friends.

Suddenly, if was as if she had the Second Sight. Her surroundings seemed a bit distant, the conversations muted. She sensed, rather than saw, but she knew what the future would be.

Josh would be the wind beneath the wings, the "guy behind the guy", first for Matt Santos, and then for Sam. Margaret would be Mrs. Landingham to Sam’s Jed Bartlet; Carol would take Margaret’s place as the power behind the throne of the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States. She herself would have a position of importance and influence in the Executive Branch but one that was independent of Josh’s.

She would have it all. Her husband would love her, trust her, depend on her, cherish her. They would be incredibly happy together for a very long time; they would pull off what all the cynics would deem impossible. They would have children and she would take time with them, but also keep her hand in the world in which she and he had chosen to live. In the history books, he would be the one credited for making it possible for Matt Santos and then Sam Seaborn to lead this country to great heights. In those same books, she would eventually be cited more than either CJ or Nancy because after Josh retired to write his book, she would find the same voice and vision that drove Jed Bartlet, Matt Santos and Sam Seaborn; Donnatella Moss Lyman would become the first woman and first person of Italian heritage to be elected President.

This is what the fates had in store for her. She could do it. She was impervious.

But she would never look at Josh in the same wondrous way that CJ looked at Danny, and for one brief nanosecond, she felt regret.


End file.
